Stories about book collecting

[Patrick G.P]

As an avid reader and bibliophile, I get an enormous amount of pleasure in reading about books, book collecting, and bookstores. Strange tales featuring these elements tend to linger in my memory and become stories I re-read very often. The first such story I can recall was Ramsey Campbell's Cold Print, which I have read way to many times since I came across it in a mythos collection. Ligotti’s Vastarien is, of course, another one of these tales I have gone back to again, and the most recent was in Egaeus Press’s A Midwinter Entertainment, a tale called Drebbel, Zander & Zervan by Ron Weighell. A delightful tale of a collector that discovers an antiquarian bookstore with a pristine Machen collection and a peculiar secret. I am guessing I am not the only one here that has a fondness for this kind of stories, and I was wondering if you guys had any recommendation for a fellow bibliophile looking for his fix?

[mongoose]

Zafon, Shadow of the Wind

https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Wind-C...ow+of+the+wind

[Zaharoff]

Two ideas.
First is The Calligrapher by Docx.
The protagonist is a calligrapher and he details the art of it, how he learned, as well as the mystery and lore.
He is working on the poetry of Donne, and he describes the love sonnets in detail, as well as the poet himself.
Then there is the mystery / romance of the novel.
While not necessarily about books, it is about the conjunction of art and poetry and may appeal to some.

Second - I was still scribbling book reviews back then, so I will paste --

Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan



High concept fantasy adventure, guised in modern dress, set between a shadowy, downtown bookshop and the gleaming tech campus of Google.
The stakes? Immortality and the meaning of life.
New employee, Clay (name is symbolic - almost all the names have other meanings) gets a job as midnight clerk at 24 hour bookstore.
The setting in in San Francisco, and the store seems more Borderlands than City Lights.
Customers are few and far between, yet most are regulars and they seem to be chasing after specific books in a pattern.
Clay works out part of that pattern and realizes the shelves mask a design - a network - of extraordinary significance.
For fantasy aficionados, Clay is a classic rogue type.
An inventive and entertaining book for readers and coders alike.
The book is deep and shallow, thought provoking and insipid, a cliffhanger - with cheats.
It held my interest throughout, though the Epilogue was needless and silly.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Since Robert Bloch's "The Man Who Collected Poe", there's been stories with similar titles like Kim Newman's "The Man Who Collected Barker" and Samuels' "The Man Who Collected Machen". There's many more, if you search isfdb for "man who collected".

I recall there was an anthology called Booklore too.

[Souphead]

The Dumas Club by Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

[Ucasuni]

Quote Originally Posted by Robert Adam Gilmour

Since Robert Bloch's "The Man Who Collected Poe", there's been stories with similar titles like Kim Newman's "The Man Who Collected Barker" and Samuels' "The Man Who Collected Machen". There's many more, if you search isfdb for "man who collected". I recall there was an anthology called Booklore too.

Yup, Booklore is a Zagava production.

[gveranon]

Elias Canetti's Auto-da-Fé. I bought a copy of this years ago, and I wonder if the reason I haven't read it yet is that I know the protagonist's home library will burn. Auto-da-Fé would probably count as horror fiction for a bibliophile.

[Patrick G.P]

Excellent, thanks a lot, everyone, there is a lot of great stuff here to get me started. Recently got Mark Samuels' The Man who Collected Machen in the mail actually, will dive into this next I think.
Zagava's Booklore collection looks interesting, can someone give me a bit more details about that collection? I am loathed to part with 70 EUR for something I don't know the contents of.

[Ucasuni]

Quote Originally Posted by Patrick G.P

Excellent, thanks a lot, everyone, there is a lot of great stuff here to get me started. Recently got Mark Samuels' The Man who Collected Machen in the mail actually, will dive into this next I think. Zagava's Booklore collection looks interesting, can someone give me a bit more details about that collection? I am loathed to part with 70 EUR for something I don't know the contents of.

Des did a RTR on Booklore:
https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com...0/11/booklore/

I myself have yet to read it. (So many books so little time.) But it's relatively high on the list of my books to read (top 10?)... FWIW, its list of contributors is, shall we say, robust.

[Revenant]

Sadly, I was disappointed by Booklore. The editing was poor. In the first three sections I found myself having to edit too many lines and I remember one sentence made no sense at all until I reread it a few times to figure out what the author was trying to say. For a book that expensive I found those kinds of mistakes unacceptable and got rid of it.